Steve Jobs is keen to bring wireless syncing to iPods this year, and carbon fiber may be the key.
Following the news that Apple has just hired a leading carbon fiber expert, we can reveal that the company has been testing Wi-Fi syncing in iPods for the past two years.
Getting large libraries of music and movies to synchronize wirelessly over WiFi hasn’t been easy, according to a source close to the company who asked to remain anonymous. But Steve Jobs himself sees it as key to updating the aging devices, which are becoming increasingly obsolete in the iPhone/iPad era.
“Jobs is pushing hard to get WiFi syncing into the next-generation of iPods,” says our source.
There are lots of issues, however, with syncing over the air rather than the current method: a USB cable. Apple’s engineers have been having trouble with reliability, signal strength, case design and battery life, our source says.
“They’ve tried multiple different body designs and materials to get it to work well but it’s been slow going,” says our source. “They have however found many improvements using a carbon fiber design.”
According to our source, Apple has prototyped the iPod classic and the previous version of the iPod nano (not the current iPod nano, which is smaller than its predecessor). The carbon fiber cases greatly improve WiFi issues but isn’t yet perfect, our source says.
“They’re still not ideal or to the engineer’s satisfaction,” says our source. “They are however making a lot of headway.”
Apple has just hired a Senior Composites Engineer. Kevin Kenny began work at the Cupertino campus this month after spending 14 years building carbon fiber bicycles for Kestral Bicycles, where he was the President and CEO.
This isn’t the first time Kenny has worked with Apple; a patent called “Reinforced Device Housing” filed by the company in 2009 had Kenny’s name on it, and depicted an outer casing for electronic devices made from ultra-strong carbon fiber. The patent reveals Kenny was clearly working with Apple for a long time before he became a full-time employee.
The current generation of iPods, which range from the tiny iPod shuffle to the high-capacity iPod classic, don’t have wireless hardware. If Apple is prototyping Wi-Fi-equipped iPod classic and nano, and adds Wi-Fi syncing to the iPod touch through software, that leaves only the iPod shuffle.
The iPod classic is getting long in the tooth, and hasn’t been updated since September 2009. This has led many to speculate that the device may soon be discontinued. However, Steve Jobs recently assured a customer that the iPod Classic isn’t going away.
Our source had no information about Wi-Fi syncing with iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. But it’s likely that the system could be easily added to these devices, which already have WiFi radios built-in.
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
